Customer Reviews
Relentlessly depressing - By: Dr. J. S. E. Sullivan-lyons, 17 May 2008 
Very readable, but ultimately this book is page after page of depression, sadness & disappointment. I didn't find it particularly moving, because I felt irritated by several of the main characters. Don't read this if you are ill, or recovering from 'flu! It might tip you over the edge!!
Extraordinary Circumstances Leads To A Very Sad Life - By: A. Rose, 03 Feb 2008 
The blurb on the back of the book reads well & the opening few chapters were quite chilling & gripping. The middle & end of the book were, although very well written, quite lacking in actual story. There was little incentive to make me pick the book up again as not a lot happens throughout Lucy's eighty years or so of extraordinary but rather boring life. William Trevor is a beautiful writer with lovely, haunting descriptions & prose `of the old school'. The book is not the easiest to read & because of his writing style I found myself re-reading several sentences & even paragraphs to get a full understanding. I think that I was trying to make myself enjoy the book because it was written by a very accomplished author rather than a gripping storyline.
Not an easy book to read, but a rewarding one... - By: D. N. Carter, 22 Apr 2007 
The Story of Lucy Gault opens in southern Ireland in 1921. It is a country in torment, a country at war, a country seeking its own destiny. The Story of Lucy Gault is both gentle & heavy at the same time. Not an easy book to read in parts, nevertheless it leaves you with images & thoughts that remain firmly in the mind long after you set it to one side.
The Gaults are Protestant in a predominantly Catholic country. Men come to the house at night, frightening men, & the Gaults, like so many other families, decide to leave.
But the daughter Lucy, nine, doesn't want to leave. She loves the house & the woods & the beach & the people. She loves her home. She won't leave, she won't. Instead, she disappears.
Her cardigan is found beside the sea. The parents imagine she has drowned & leave in mourning, grieving for their only child. But Lucy is not dead.
So begins William Trevor's fascinating novel. Mister Trevor has a way with words quite different to any other writer I have read. Several times I had to re-read a sentence to make sense of it, several times I was left wondering if the printer had made a mistake. And more times too, I re-read a sentence just because of the wonder of it.
The book is full of heartache & sorrow, & yet beautifully written. Time passes by so slowly. Will Lucy ever find happiness? She might do, one day.
William Trevor was born in Ireland in 1928, but now lives in Devon in the south west of England. He has written a huge body of work, & won innumerable awards, & if you haven't dipped your toes in the Trevor stream before now, this may well be a good place to begin.
LIVES OF QUIET DESPERATION... - By: Lawyeraau, 25 Jun 2005 
This is a beautifully written book, rife with emotion & feeling. It is a book that will keep the reader riveted to its pages until the very last one is turned, so absorbing is the story. It is, as the title of the books says, the story of one Lucy Gault. Her story begins in Ireland in 1921, in the shadow of the Partition of Ireland. Feelings against the English & Protestants were running high, & many of the manorial estates were being targeted for destruction by the local Catholic peasantry in that time of unrest.
The Gault family lived in a lovely ancestral home, Lahardane, tucked away in the remote Irish countryside. Captain Everard Gault, Lucy's father, though Irish, was Protestant & had served in the English Army. He was married to Heloise, an English woman. These facts had evidently not gone unnoticed by the local yokels. When the Gaults find that their home has been targeted for destruction & the threat of arson is alll too real, the Gaults reluctantly decide to leave their beloved home in the care of their two faithful family retainers & relocate to England for safety's sake. This is a decision that leaves their nine year old daughter, Lucy, heartbroken.
Lucy is loath to leave her beloved home with its resplendent land, rolling acres of lush greenery, as well as its lovely beach, & a beloved dog for which her feelings run deep. Lahardane is, indeed, a child's paradise. Just before they are due to leave, a distraught Lucy, desperate to change the way things are going, decides to run away in hopes of having her parents see things her way. Instead, what occurs is a tragedy of epic proportions, one that would have far reaching ramifications, changing the lives of many. It would certainly impact profoundly upon Lucy.
This is truly a gloriously written, thematicallly complex book in which the author examines the way that love & calamity can shape destiny. Its complexity is belied by its simple, yet rich & lyrical, prose. The author lovingly tenders the delicately nuanced words that express the strong undercurrent of emotion that ripples beneath the surface of this haunting novel, drawing the reader into its heartbreaking story of love, forgiveness, & redemption. The fatalism of its characters aptly mirrors the historical fatalism of the Irish. This is a literary gem that the reader will, undoubtedly, read in one sitting, as I did, loath to break the careful cadence of the words that tell so compelling a story. Bravo!
Beautifully written, but unbelievable - By: www.bibliofemme.com, 19 Dec 2003 Having a fascination with the 'big houses' of Ireland & the tensions in the 1920s between the native Irish & the Anglo-Irish ruling classes (something to do with my Historian past), The Story of Lucy Gault was a book I reallly wanted to read.
I was hoping for something along the lines of Elizabeth Bowen's The Last September but Lucy Gault is neither as believable nor as gripping. As with alll Trevor's books, it is beautifully written & his descriptions of the Cork coast & the emotions of a child are acutely observed. However, after a strong start, the book - as Lucy's life - meanders to an unsatisfying conclusion. Too many questions are unanswered & avenues left unexplored for The Story of Lucy Gault to be truly believable.
